Folks, I was an addict. Yes, it was decades ago but it very nearly killed me and sent me to the indescribable torments of hell. I’ve written about this in places but I’m coming up to the anniversary of my very nearly dying and being carried by Satan out of my body and into the nether worlds. It was probably the most intense, searing, indescribable event I’ve ever experienced and I remember it extremely well.
But it came through addiction. In this case, it wasn’t a physical addiction like alcohol or some opiad-based addictions can be. It was psychedelics, and it was a psychological addiction rather than a physical one. This was long ago and I’ve had a wonderful, sustained deliverance from those things. As Jesus said to one man, “Go and sin no more lest a worse thing come unto thee.” (John 5:14)
In my case “Godly sorrow worked repentance to salvation, not to be repented of…” (II Corinthians 7:10). I learned my lesson and never wanted to have that session repeated again. And probably it never would have been because I’m sure that was my very last chance as I hung by less than a thread over the indescribable consuming fires of eternal hell.
I get a kick out of the folks who say there is no hell. I usually don’t reply to those things but I just say in my heart, “Buddy, I’ve been there, I’ve experience it in eternity and I can tell you, the words we use don’t really do the subject justice of just how bad it is.”
But for me, it came through addiction. And sadly, as my adult life has gone on, I’ve lost several good friends through addiction, dear and close friends, 
even missionaries who “bore the burden and the heat of the day” (Matthew 20:12) and yet their lives were ended, most of the time through alcohol. I can think of three good friends, I mean good friends, close friends who at one time had been missionaries on the foreign mission field with me who ended up dying through the curse of alcohol.
How can that happen? How can addiction so claim and destroy a life like that? A Godly life, a saved life, a Christian life? Well, addiction can somehow bring a false peace, a false contentment and a calmness that is nice at times but it just isn’t really the real thing. Maybe you’ve had a glass of wine sometimes. Then maybe on rare occasion you’ve had two? You know that feeling? Feeling kind of relaxed? Not thinking about those things you were before? Not worried anymore? In a good place? Want to keep getting back to that place?
This is really personal for me. Those dear friends spring to mind, and I know there are more, who ended up taking their own lives or dying of alcohol poisoning. In my personal case, this was long ago and I wasn’t saved. But somehow the drugs took me into levels of consciousness that I’d never known. But Jesus said, “He that enters not by the door, but climbs up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber.” (John 10:1)
That’s what I was doing, “climbing up some other way.” Trying to gain insight and spirituality through drugs, rather than by “The door”. Jesus said of Himself, “I am the door, by Me if any man enter in he shall be saved, and shall go in and out and find pasture.” (John 10:9) But drugs and alcohol are “climbing up some other way.”
I don’t care how much insight and clarity you think the drugs give you, how much they boost your confidence, or how much the alcohol chills you out and makes you mellow and easier to be around, there’s a real and strongly present danger in it. When it comes to drugs, psychedelics, or opium-based drugs, friends… it’s just too much and I’m thankful I haven’t touched that stuff since I was 20 years old.
Just don’t do it. Don’t try it. Don’t experiment with it. No, you are not strong enough. No, just once will indeed hurt. Take it from me. It’s only by the absolute miracle working power of God that I was delivered from those things, utterly miraculous. But for every one like me, there are hundreds and even thousands whose lives were forever ruined by drug addiction.
Alcohol? It’s not exactly the same thing. I drink wine from time to time. Psalm 104 says “And wine that makes glad the heart of man…” As most know, even Jesus made wine (John 2). But like I said, I can immediately name close, dear friends whose lives were destroyed by alcohol and they ultimately died from it.
We just have to be aware of how bad things can get, how strong sin is in the lives of even those who have committed their lives to Him. It is falsehood. It’s a false peace, a false revelation, as the fruits of sin always are. The Bible talks about “the pleasures of sin for a season.” (Hebrews 11:25) Addiction is one of the worst killers there is and it’s as rampant as ever.
Turn to the Lord with all your heart; pour out your heart before the Lord in vehement prayer for strength to fight addiction. Also, Solomon said, “He that walks with wise men shall be wise, but a companion of fools shall be destroyed.” (Proverbs 13:20) After I nearly died on drugs but was saved at the last moment, I knew immediately and instinctively that I needed to get away from my old friends that I’d done drugs with, even though I grew up with them, and to find some new and Godly friends. In my case the Lord did just that as I went out to search for Him. I was led to some truly Godly young Christians and my life began anew from there.
I hope this is some help to someone. Addiction, drug addiction or old fashion alcoholism, is as rampant and consuming as it has ever been. And as trite as it may sound, the only solution I found was to come to the Lord and to the power and name of Jesus.
But there are some Christians who evidently have come to a place where their overriding thought process is to be so fearful of sin and its power in their lives that questions of what is a sin in every affair of everyday life makes this their continual conversation. I find that sad and a misplaced understanding of things.
But this whole thing can get to be a downward spiral of fear, confusion and particularly condemnation and it ends up being disastrous to your spiritual life. I went through some things like this in my early Christian life and they were really some battles. I wrote about these things in “
But even more we need to be mindful of “
There’s joy in our labors but they can be real labors. So many of us have spent years working in some slavish, mundane 9-to-5 job, under sometimes rather cruel taskmasters, mostly serving Mammon in order that we can feed our families and pay bills. So, how much more should we put our whole heart into our service for God in the ministry He opens for us?
and of course for so many Christians, their personal vision of God’s will in their lives is not really full or complete.
We should take it as our calling and commission, each and every one of us, to lay down our lives for our brethren and for the lost and bedarkened souls of this world.
But in the dream, the younger man, maybe he was 19, had been messing around with the girlfriend of the man chasing him up the stairs. This enraged man, he was like maybe 28, was utterly beside himself with anger, chased the young man to the top landing of the apartment building and found the young man hiding.
But then suddenly one of their friends, a woman who had also raced up the stairs, was on her knees in front of the enraged older man, begging him with all her heart to let it go and to not let this incident be the end of both of the men in some fight to the death.
He backed off some feet away, still full of emotion.
He made the right decision; he listened to her wisdom and reasoning. He was right at the brink of throwing his life away in wreaking vengeance on the man who’d messed around with his girlfriend.
How difficult and rare it is to listen to the voice of reason in times like that or even to have the voice of reason there to still speak to you at that moment. But this young woman friend of theirs was on her knees, matching her passion with his, begging him not to throw his life away in killing his friend over his foolishness.
It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, which I told to the man who’d deferred his anger. He didn’t yield to his rage, as “reasonable” as it had seemed at the time. He in a sense saved his own life by not taking the other man’s life. “
It seems clear from this passage that the well known admonition of “Judge not” that Jesus taught was not to be taken so broadly and universally that it was to hinder believers from “judging righteous judgment”, another of the Lord’s teachings.
What a device of the devil! How Satan has disarmed and imprisoned so many children of the Most High to where they are rendered almost utterly useless in the battle that rages about us for the souls of men, for the morals of our nations, for the very lives and hearts of our children. I believe with all within me that the body of Christ around the world should be awake, galvanized and properly trained to be, not spectators but active participants at the forefront of the battle for right or wrong, light or darkness and God or Satan that is raging and intensifying every day.
Of course there are exceptions to this and there are many who are more broken now, more desperate now that the powers of darkness have taken the high ground so clearly throughout much of the once Christian nations. Some are waking up. Some are fighting back and standing up for the Lord. But it’s a very small minority.
In Jacob’s case, it was a good deal more problematic than that. By this time Jacob was pretty much a rich man, with vast flocks and herds, wives and children, servants and helpers. And his twin brother, Esau, who he’d so blatantly and subtlety tricked out of his inheritance, was a fairly major local warlord. One way we know this is because, when Esau heard that Jacob was on his way back, he gathered 400 of his personal troops to go out with him to meet his brother.
